[ragnese]

There's still darkness without people. Sickness, suffering, etc, exist without humans. Hell, even torture exists. Orcas play with their food as they're killing it. I believe cats do as well.

If you can zoom out from that at see it as some grand, beautiful, process, then you have to apply the same filter to all of the evil stuff humans do as well, IMO.

[ganafagol]

Fair point. Animals eat each other, and that process is pretty cruel at times. Do animals have a mental concept of cruelty though? Of guilt? I suspect most don't. That does not make their actions less cruel, but it reduces the blame perhaps.

We humans know exactly what's going on. Wr do it anyway. We keep animals in horrible conditions. And we know it. Yet we keep doing it. We treat each other horribly. We have really terrible weapons. We use them anyway. It's cruel and we know it. We spread hate and participate in racism and dehumanisation. Many of us thrive in either participating or at least watching conflict. We celebrate movies depicting humans mistreating or killing each other. We know it and we like it. Oh but it's only against the bad guys!!!1

I think it's not a fair comparison.

[ragnese]

> Do animals have a mental concept of cruelty though? Of guilt? I suspect most don't.

What if a human, or groups of humans, don't feel any guilt or don't believe what they're doing is cruel? I don't think that would help you sleep better...

Also, at least some animals are, in fact, capable of complex emotions. Pigs, apparently, can feel empathy: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/2015...

It shouldn't be surprising. We are animals, after all.

> We humans know exactly what's going on. Wr[sic] do it anyway.

Perhaps that makes it worse, but I don't know that it means that animals being cruel doesn't count as "darkness" as in the grandparent comment. (It certainly doesn't refute the point that cancer is still a thing from nature and it's pretty damn dark)

But I'm pretty sure that animals would do the same stuff we do if they ever developed the capacity to do so. I see no reason to assume they wouldn't. Again- we are animals. We evolved from the same ancestors. I'm sure if my dog learned how to farm for meat, pretty much all of dog-civilization would play out with a lot of the same themes as human civilization. Not because I'm not creative enough to imagine other outcomes, but because I have no reason or evidence to assume that their form of life is fundamentally different from ours.

I'm fairly sure that aliens would observe us and the Orca who throws the crying seal in the air as the same. They would either see both as sad, or neither because "That's just what Earth life does. They kill others. They form packs and fight over territory. Some exhibit anti-social behaviors."

[ganafagol]

Sure, if animals would be like humans, they would behave like humans. But that's not an argument to excuse what humans are doing.

If I was just like some serial killer, then I'd also behave like a serial killer. Does that mean the other serial killer should not get punished? No. It just means that I should be pun8ished too if I was like them.

But I'm not really arguing humans-vs-animals. I'm arguing against world-is-dark-humans-are-light. It's the world that's light and humans who make it dark, for other humans. With exceptions of course.

Cancer is a bad example. It doesn't have an agenda. It's just a side effect of some mutation or such. Sure we can consider it dark. But compared to humans who actually have an agenda, i.e., they choose to be dark, that's a different ballpark.